Beware of propaganda: Lies Unravel in the Zodiac Killer Case
Zodiac Killer
- Thread starter morf13
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2024
- Messages
- 236
- Reaction score
- 856
He promised his name. I think he did but not in the way everyone expects by solving the cipher. It's a giant riddle. 'That wasn't me on the TV show which brings up a point about me' . Everyone thinks about Martin Belli and the TV show, it's not, he is playing games. Look at King Tut in the Batman TV show that was released in the late 1960's immediately prior to the Zodiac killings. That is what this is about. King Tut collects slaves for paradise. You solve the riddle, it leads you down a track. The cipher is a riddle that gives you a clue. FYI the Lake Berryessa attack occurred on the first anniversary of the King Tut episode where he goes to Gotham reservoir to commit a crime. I am unsure whether this is by accident or intended. In that episode a certain police officer becomes deranged. This also hints to his name.
I am unable to name Zodiac as per rules of the forum but If you want to know what the Mikado letter has to do with this, look at 'The Minstrel' from the batman TV series. It's another clue to his identity. He sings a song linked to a police officer whose surname may implicate his identity. That song is from the Mikado.
Look at my posts if you want further information.
The Zodiac Killer’s first cryptograms baffled law enforcement, but not Donald and Bettye Harden. Now, decades later, lost letters from Donald to historian David Kahn have surfaced, revealing new details about their legendary codebreaking. Watch my latest YouTube episode for an exclusive look at these historic documents!
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2024
- Messages
- 1,526
- Reaction score
- 12,062
"A Wand'ring Minstrel"?
[NANKI-POO]
A wandering minstrel I —
A thing of shreds and patches
Of ballads, songs and snatches
And dreamy lullaby!
My catalogue is long
Through every passion ranging
And to your humours changing
I tune my supple song!
I tune my supple song!
The shreds and patches make me think of the way he constructs his letters and the Stine letter in particular where he includes bits of the victim's clothing.
The "catalogue is long" makes me think of the way Zodiac is constantly tallying up his victim count. The tuning of the song is adaptability.
They may never find Zodiac. I think the cipher's a game he won, it was sensational and distracting, and while it offered some information, it was information he didn't care if we had. Don't get me wrong, it commanded attention for good reason, but I think it may ultimately have helped him. I do think he was telling the truth on the disguises aspect. I think he's into music/theater himself in some capacity and knows a lot about wardrobe and stage makeup. Agreed on King Tut, but I think Zodiac's symbol is more along the lines of pagan Gauls (they have similar beliefs) and that little cross inside the circle is the precursor of a Celtic cross, the sun cross. I personally have started to wonder if he's got Dutch/Belgian ancestry, or if he has some fascination with those cultures, and here's why.
Extract just the letters from this. A E N (symbol) (symbol) K (symbol) M (symbol) ?L (or symbol) N A M
Known letters only: A E N K M N A M
I'm repeating the "E" in here, there's only one. But if just one of the M's there was another N, you'd have this: Manneken (As it is, it's close, it's "Mannakem")
What is a manneken? And I'm seeing "manekem" could potentially be some weird derivative. It's Dutch for possibly just the English "mannequin." I'm thinking of his villainous executioner outfit, but my guess is he was always wearing some sort of disguise, just not such an obvious or rustic one. Manneken can also be little man. Manneken Pis is a famous statue in Brussels with a urinating little boy. Brussels is in Belgium, which famously oppressed Congo and exploited them for rubber through a system of brutal colonization. King Leopold of Belgium. "Leo," and Leo also the sun sign in astrology.
There is a "Congo Street" in Sunnyside SF because of affinity at the time with the Belgians/Europeans, Netherlands. I think there are generally a lot of Dutch/Scandinavian/Netherlands/?Belgians (Belgium was once in the same kingdom as Netherlands) in CA, in 1970, CA had the highest number of foreign-born Dutch in the country. Sunnyside does have a strong Danish presence in the 60s, and Congo Street's particularly mentioned in one source. Zodiac mentioned he had a basement. Sunnyside houses in that area look like they have basements, they're built on steep inclines.
I remember reading something about a Zodiac connection to Sunnyside particularly, and although I can't find it yet, I'm going to keep looking. I seriously wonder if his house with a basement wasn't in Sunnyside. Obviously pure speculation, and I'm more likely wrong than right.
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2011
- Messages
- 2,402
- Reaction score
- 13,897
East Area Rapist was a member of LE and was eventually caught using DNA. It was thru a genealogy service, but still…
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2024
- Messages
- 1,526
- Reaction score
- 12,062
After doing more research and plodding through many more cases, have changed my mind completely on SF for where he probably lived longer term, and think Sacramento-- although he may have been based in SF for a period of time. Think he was married, highly intelligent/probably college educated and a selective college at that; probably some military, background in high school sports; employed in academia for a lengthy period of time; grew up in CA, probably first generation American; strong interests in music/theater and Asian studies, may have some ties to Sonoma vineyards in his youth. He has knowledge of Druidic symbols, that symbol he uses looks like a sun cross. Think he wasn't kidding about the disguises, the medieval executioner's outfit makes me sure of it, and just as he disguises himself at the crime scenes, he is disguising himself in those letters, I don't think the typos are unintentional after all, and I did used to think they probably were. Think he was a crafty, seasoned murder before he ever sent his first letter. Think he has involvement in the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders, particularly Carolyn Davis, who'd told someone close to her she feared for her life having witnessed a double murder. Carolyn Davis is the only SRHMurders victim to be poisoned with strychnine and there was a Zodiac symbol left at the road near her remains. Strychnine was used to control gophers & voles on vineyards until the EPA put an end to such use, I believe around 1972. In the end, it's jmo, but I think he'll prove to be a far more versatile and prolific killer than is currently known. And do think that Red Phantom letter may indeed be him, he's clearly familiar with Mikado. I didn't know this previously, but before operas, they'll do what are called "phantom sessions" with phantom singers and phantom audience members as the director and lighting crew figure out the lighting for the production. And maybe that's just what he viewed those letters as, "phantom sessions" as he prepped for his next murder.
Think he's still alive, and I hope they get him.
Think he's still alive, and I hope they get him.
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2020
- Messages
- 16
- Reaction score
- 34
The most logical thing to me is, the zodiac is 4 people. hence the symbol, with four lines converging into one.
The zodiac has 12 houses, but the houses are all based on 4 elements; earth, air, water, fire.
Earth signs are Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn. Air signs are Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius.
Water signs are Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. Fire signs are Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius.
I think this is why they could never pin down one person- because it wasn't one person.
It's 4 people, one from each of the elements. So it could have been, for example, Taurus, Gemini, Scorpio, Leo.
The zodiac has 12 houses, but the houses are all based on 4 elements; earth, air, water, fire.
Earth signs are Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn. Air signs are Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius.
Water signs are Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. Fire signs are Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius.
I think this is why they could never pin down one person- because it wasn't one person.
It's 4 people, one from each of the elements. So it could have been, for example, Taurus, Gemini, Scorpio, Leo.
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2017
- Messages
- 4,236
- Reaction score
- 54,735
Interesting.
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2008
- Messages
- 7,271
- Reaction score
- 43,608
much of this is discussed in several books. the Mikado , but I remember one suspect keeping gophers in his parents basement where he lived. mOO
Fuzzy_ghr78
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2025
- Messages
- 1
- Reaction score
- 2
Maybe not a team in the traditional way. Maybe there was one person behind all of it — someone with the intelligence and the means to manipulate and play mental tricks. Someone who didn’t necessarily enjoy killing or didn’t have the ability to do it themselves, but enjoyed playing with the police and people’s minds. Someone who knew very well that having somebody else pull the trigger could be a perfect way to stay in the shadows and watch the scene unfold in total safety.
It’s also possible that this person did something to the people they hired as frontmen — got rid of them because they made a mistake or became too dangerous to work with anymore.
here's my totally impractical, brute force way to catch zodiac
zodiac very likely had a driver's license. he was certainly driving to get around, i gather enforcement of the requirement to have a license was decent by then, and the last thing he would want is to get a ticket with a bloody rag in the trunk 2 blocks from a murder.
IIUC, the state of california kept physical copies of driver's licenses issued in the late 60s and early 70s. IIUC, these included copies of the pictures and the descriptive information (height, weight, eye, and hair color). i gather some of these have been digitized and entered into california's searchable database to some unknown degree, including pictures and biometrics. if most or all of the remainder still exist in boxes, file cabinets, etc., first digitize them all, for some reasonable window of time (1969 - # of years they're good for, through 1971). yes, that's ~ 10 million people.
narrow to people living within 2-3 hours' drive of all the murder scenes. then narrow by gender, race, height range, weight range, based on witness descriptions. that's still hundreds of thousands.
but we have more information we can use to narrow further. testimony of his hair color is imprecise, but it seems fair to say it was neither platinum nor jet black. let's say that shaves off 10%. then we apply machine learning to the pictures to rule people in or out (or inconclusive). he did not have any obvious distinguishing features such as moles, scars, tooth gaps, unibrows, cleft chin, etc. so throw out any people whose pictures show they DID. shaves off another 20-30% or so. witnesses don't describe him as having especially narrow- or wide-set eyes. so throw out outliers for eye-spacing. etc. in this way, i think you could get the suspect pool down to something like 50k people.
next, look up everyone's birth or immigration records. if anyone's born outside the US, toss em. zodiac was american. shaves off another few percent. next, do sleuthing on everyone you can find. throw out anyone who grew up east of the mississippi, or in texas or minnesota. all witnesses agree zodiac had no discernible accent (beyond american). that likely means he grew up somewhere in the american west, outside of texas and minnesota. this might be more of a "soft" classifier that sorts strength of suspects rather than ruling them in or out... next, try to identify military members, and see whether they were deployed at the time of any of the killings. throw out anyone found to have been overseas or in another state at the time. ...
by being sufficiently creative yet careful, i think you could get the pool down to 4 figures or at least low 5 figures. then you ignore due process and fingerprint all of them, and compare the prints to the ones from the stine scene that were in blood.
in this way, the state of california could spend a billion dollars it doesn't have, and grossly violate the constitutional rights of 1000s of people, in a bid that has maybe 50-50 odds of succeeding at identifying one serial killer who's probably already dead.
zodiac very likely had a driver's license. he was certainly driving to get around, i gather enforcement of the requirement to have a license was decent by then, and the last thing he would want is to get a ticket with a bloody rag in the trunk 2 blocks from a murder.
IIUC, the state of california kept physical copies of driver's licenses issued in the late 60s and early 70s. IIUC, these included copies of the pictures and the descriptive information (height, weight, eye, and hair color). i gather some of these have been digitized and entered into california's searchable database to some unknown degree, including pictures and biometrics. if most or all of the remainder still exist in boxes, file cabinets, etc., first digitize them all, for some reasonable window of time (1969 - # of years they're good for, through 1971). yes, that's ~ 10 million people.
narrow to people living within 2-3 hours' drive of all the murder scenes. then narrow by gender, race, height range, weight range, based on witness descriptions. that's still hundreds of thousands.
but we have more information we can use to narrow further. testimony of his hair color is imprecise, but it seems fair to say it was neither platinum nor jet black. let's say that shaves off 10%. then we apply machine learning to the pictures to rule people in or out (or inconclusive). he did not have any obvious distinguishing features such as moles, scars, tooth gaps, unibrows, cleft chin, etc. so throw out any people whose pictures show they DID. shaves off another 20-30% or so. witnesses don't describe him as having especially narrow- or wide-set eyes. so throw out outliers for eye-spacing. etc. in this way, i think you could get the suspect pool down to something like 50k people.
next, look up everyone's birth or immigration records. if anyone's born outside the US, toss em. zodiac was american. shaves off another few percent. next, do sleuthing on everyone you can find. throw out anyone who grew up east of the mississippi, or in texas or minnesota. all witnesses agree zodiac had no discernible accent (beyond american). that likely means he grew up somewhere in the american west, outside of texas and minnesota. this might be more of a "soft" classifier that sorts strength of suspects rather than ruling them in or out... next, try to identify military members, and see whether they were deployed at the time of any of the killings. throw out anyone found to have been overseas or in another state at the time. ...
by being sufficiently creative yet careful, i think you could get the pool down to 4 figures or at least low 5 figures. then you ignore due process and fingerprint all of them, and compare the prints to the ones from the stine scene that were in blood.
in this way, the state of california could spend a billion dollars it doesn't have, and grossly violate the constitutional rights of 1000s of people, in a bid that has maybe 50-50 odds of succeeding at identifying one serial killer who's probably already dead.
come to think of it, it's kinda crazy that the known zodiac prints have never gotten a hit in the digital systems, given that 1) profilers think he committed lesser crimes when he was younger, and 2) he was often sloppy.
I think a plausible scenario is that he lived in Vallejo but worked in Fairfield, maybe at Travis Air Force Base due to the Air Force shoe at Lake Berryessa. My reasoning is that a Zodiac researcher in 1975 discovered evidence of the Mikado Record being checked out in 1968 and 1969 from the Vallejo library while simultaneous to that, someone was checking out David Kahn's Codebreakers at the Solano County Free Library in Fairfield. Both items were checked out over and over again during those two years and would have been integral to the Zodiac's written activities. No one was checking either item out before in the years before or after the murders. None of the check-outs in Fairfield were likely on a Saturday as none of the due dates were on a Saturday. While three of the ten had due dates on a Saturday for the Mikado in Vallejo. Strong indication of a M-F guy living in Vallejo working in Fairfield. The researcher took pictures of it and put it in his book which are on-line. He suspected a guy named William Joseph Grant who has been chronicled here and elsewhere. Very suspicious activity with those two items being checked out at the same time, many times in 68 and 69. Too bad cops did not think of it in 68 or 69 or they may have come up with something at that time.
With the advances in AI, something similar to what you have described could one day be possible. However, it would have to be a "government operation" due to confidential information. Even dead people's DL information in California is protected. Having been an employee of one form of government or another for 36 years of my life, I am beyond skeptical of it happening. I seriously doubt they would initiate the process on something that is now over 55 years old. But you are very likely correct, the identity of the Zodiac is highly probable to be on a California driver's license that is still in digitized archives.
There is a podcast series called The Consult: Real FBI Profilers. In a five part series 80 through 84, three retired profilers get together with researcher Michael Butterfield and discuss the Zodiac killer case, starting with the incidents and then the pyschological profile. For me, the real value is listening to one of the retired profilers named Robert "Bob" Drew talk about who the Zodiac was from a profile perspective. This guy is very sound IMO. Bob describes some of his thoughts on what the Zodiac killer was like. This is a synopis of what Bob said about the Zodiac: had deep rooted major grievances with life being unfair from a very young age, likely caused through vicitmization as a child through some type of abuse, humilated by this, had a resentment towards authority, was fairly intelligent but not a genius, high school education but not much past that, maybe some technical training or some minor post high school education, was an under achiever professionally because of personality problems and resentment towards authority (does not like being directed), very possible he had a short but mundane term in the military, if so, briefly served as a non confrontational under performer, had strong feelings of exclusion and inadequacy, regularly ignored by others socially and romantically, felt his intellect was very underappreciated, was lonely, angry, vengeful, quiet, brooding, not interested in activities with others unless he was in a superior role, used arrogance to mask insecurities but was non confrontational and non threatening to others in daily life, likely afraid of confrontation. Likely to have been bullied physically in school on a regular basis, resents others success in the financial, social, romantic realms. Believes that life has unfairly excluded him from being able to achieve success, childhood trauma has led him to such a feeling of inadequacy that he has compensated for it with the Zodiac persona. Had "compensatory" interests in comic books and movies where there was an underdog character. First three crimes represent his failures with romantic relationships, as he was awkward and timid with females, ignored by them. Paul Stine murder in SF, picked an upper class socio-economic neighborhood due to resentment for being a financial under achiever, as a way to give them fear, did the bus bomb threat to scare children since he was scared as a child and no one did anything to protect him.
All in all, it makes a lot of sense and seems very possible. Obviously, it is all an estimation based on the training and experience of profilers and could be wrong but the theory is sound. May not help us get to the real suspect but who knows.
All in all, it makes a lot of sense and seems very possible. Obviously, it is all an estimation based on the training and experience of profilers and could be wrong but the theory is sound. May not help us get to the real suspect but who knows.
The one distinction is that there is some physical evidence for this case making it solvable unlike JTR. The handwritten letters and envelopes, the latent fingerprints, the bindings from Lake Berryessa all have the potential for evidence. All we need is an advance in technology, coupled with a desire by current and future LE officers to stop "fiddle-farting" around.
There is one other avenue for fingerprints outside of an arrest record. If the suspect served in the military, or worked for the federal government, however briefly, he would have been fingerprinted. The question becomes: what happened to the fingerprint card? Would it be in his files at the National Archives in St. Louis or were they lost in the catastrophic fire of July 1973 that destroyed an unbelievable amount of military records? Was the card ever scanned into IAFIS when it came on line or now the New Generation system? Is it still sitting in a box waiting to be digitized or destroyed by staff who deemed it obsolete and insignificant? You will never get a straight answer on this from anyone we have access to. No one actually knows what was done with a military or federal workforce fingerprint card from the 1950's or 1960's. Even if it was scanned into the system, it could have been of such poor quality to be matched digitially. But, never give up hope. I have seen advances in fingerprint technology actually solve a decades old crime.
bbm
and it's entirely possible no one knows, because no one currently working in the relevant agencies has been there long enough to remember, is required to care, or would even know where to look.
information doesn't always get passed down reliably over time, especially when there's been one or more changes of record-keeping systems, and the people who remember the old one have all retired. the records might still exist somewhere, but there won't always be an adequate paper trail to find them or anyone who knows what direction to point you in. and even if there is, it's like 50-50 the endboss responsible for the records will be on vacation with no one covering.
edit: sorry, i just now saw your post saying you were government employee, so you know all this already
Last edited:
let's just say that i too am intimately familiar with public sector bureaucracies, and i 100% share your skepticism, lol
Similar threads
Guardians Monthly Goal
Our goal for the month is 50 new Guardians members to sign up. Have you been thinking about becoming a member?
Click here to find out how!
Online statistics
- Members online
- 143
- Guests online
- 1,819
- Total visitors
- 1,962